Four-card Holdings

	2
	A Q 8 7 4
	6 4 3
	A J 5 2
K Q 9 7 6 5		10 4
10 5 3 2		J 9
5		A 10 9 7 2
K 8		Q 7 6 3
	A J 8 3
	K 6
	K Q J 8	Contract: 3 no trump
	10 9 4

Here was an interesting four-card situation that was perhaps not obvious, but then not impermeable to working out for the best solution. (This hand was presented elsewhere -- in counting winners.) West's opening lead was the 7 of spades, so he had already conceded a trick other West's weren't. But that's not the key point here.

Declarer won with the jack, went to his ace of hearts. (The ace! The queen would at least have allowed some communication and indeed a run of the hearts if someone sluffs poorly as West did. Here declarer risked blocking the heart suit if the defense were to drive out the ace of clubs before declarer unblocks the hearts for something close to a disaster, I think.) Declarer then led a diamond. East went up with the ace and led a spade, declarer winning with the ace. He now cashed three diamond tricks, sluffing a club. West was, well, pseudo-squeezed on the third diamond, but succeeded in making a difficult situation worse. Indeed, he sluffed a heart before any of his spades! He next sluffed a spade and then another heart! (This, incidentally, seems to be a common failing in defenders: they fall in love with their powerful suit which they have virtually no chance of running even in no trump, and in so doing, give up a valuable trick or two in another suit.)

What should West have done? Well, his first two sluffs should certainly have been spades. Of course it's a lovely suit capable of defeating declarer -- if he gets the lead! But with the ace of clubs sitting over his king, how does he expect to get the lead? So there should have been no problem with those first two discards, getting down to declarer's length in spades. It was on the third discard (fourth diamond) where he might have felt squeezed.

It does call for a bit of thought. If West sluffs a spade, declarer now has the long spade and can generate a third spade trick by losing one to West. Except that there is a catch. Declarer would then have no entry to his long spade, unless he neglected to -- or chose not to -- unblock his hearts, in which case, West could give him some grief by knocking out the ace of clubs! That would hold declarer to two heart winners! And if declarer does unblock the hearts before establishing the long spade, then he has three top heart winners, but no entry to that spade. I can't go through all the possibilities if this happens, with three different minds making decisions. The discussion is perhaps getting a little wordy already. But I think you can see that this third spade discard would be far preferable to the heart.

And a club discard? It might seem that this helps declarer who now can pick up the king without spending an honor. But declarer still doesn't fare all that well, since East with the long diamond would control the second round of clubs and cash at least the third trick for the defense.

So the heart discard is the worst -- and West threw two! Well, he might as well have tossed the second one, since the first did all the damage. This allowed declarer to unblock the hearts, go to the A of clubs, pick up five hearts, three diamonds, two spades and a club for eleven tricks.

This may not be the most obvious of cases offered here, and a lot easier to work out in hindsight looking at all the cards. And yet, I dunno about that. I have said emphatically, keep the same length as dummy shows if you possibly can, and if you're already shorter than dummy, that is perhaps all the more reason to keep your length intact in that suit. So, yes, looking at a five-card heart suit in dummy, I think West would have done well to mark that as the last suit he's going to discard from, meaning his task doesn't require a lot of spectacular cardreading. With a 10-high suit? Oh, c'mon. On a previous example, it was a 9-high suit, and I've seen 7-high four-card suits where that's the one to save. If West saves that suit, there is no way declarer can make the 11 tricks he was allowed to make on those heart discards and finish high in the final tally.

I didn't go through what East might be doing all this time, partly because it doesn't matter when West discards hearts and the topic here is the handling of the 4-card suit in the first place. But East should go low on that lead from dummy at trick three, or if you prefer, split his 10 9. What declarer would do at that point is anyone's guess, but you can see it would give him a good deal of grief. If he wants to lead again toward his diamond honors, he's going to have to unblock his hearts, use up his ace of clubs, cash his last heart winner, and unless he makes the good guess of finessing the 8 of diamonds as East ducks on a second diamond lead, he would be held to a rather mediocre two clubs, two diamonds, three hearts and 2 spades -- on a favorable opening lead!